Dove's has long been at the forefront of advocating for real beauty, challenging the unrealistic pervasive industry beauty standards. Since the 2004 "Campaign for Real Beauty," Dove has focused on representing real women authentically. Celebrating the campaign's 20th anniversary in 2024, Dove's global beauty study revealed concerning trends: 1 in 3 women feel pressured to alter their appearance due to online beauty standards. The objective was dual: to honor Dove's legacy by promoting a wider spectrum of beauty across its communications and ensuring that technology accurately showcases this diversity, countering the spread of artificial beauty that perpetuates stereotypes. Despite Dove's commitment to never use AI to create or distort images of women, the broader challenge remains, as we know the world will do so. "The Dove Code" project is Dove's response, aiming to redefine beauty inclusively in the digital age, especially within AI-generated content.

"Dove Code" is a pioneering global project that transforms Dove's 20-year legacy into a universal code capable of reshaping the biased beauty standards perpetuated by AI. When conducting typical searches in AI image generators like Midjourney or DALL-E for terms such as "gorgeous woman" or "confident woman," adding "according to Dove real beauty campaign" reveals a significantly different outcome, by creating a diverse array of women's image of different races, ethnicities, skin tones, and hair textures. This phenomenon happens because 20 years of Dove Real Beauty Campaigns on internet databases makes AI behavior different, through data gathering, analysis and data interpretation. By integrating Dove's principles into AI, the "Dove Code" not only critiques the current state of digital beauty standards but also offers a potent solution for inclusivity, thereby evolving the brand's image and setting a new benchmark for diversity in the future, showcasing authentic beauty through AI.

Our strategy involves "Real State Beauty" research, with over 33,000 participants across 20 countries, that revealed AI impact on women's self-esteem. Then, we discovered that 20 years of Dove Real Beauty's campaigns, showcasing +10.000 real diverse women, and impacting +100 million lives by the brand's self-esteem projects, became open data to be gathered, analyzed and interpreted by any AI-image tools to generate diverse and authentic beauty images in AI.

All prompts starring the campaign were strategically data-oriented to expose different AI beauty biases; "perfect skin" focused on artificial skin tone, and "most beautiful woman in the world", focused on eurocentric features.

By data interpretation, films, OOHS and digital content combat AI bias by region and culture, such as hyper-sexualization of "imagine a Brazilian woman" in Brazil, or sexist bias in "imagine a nurse" next to hospitals. This data-driven approach campaign ensured impact for our global audience.

To launch the campaign, we held simultaneous events in New York and London, attended by gender bias activists in artificial intelligence, influencers, and the press. We shared research findings and campaign assets, and explained how to use “The Dove Code” in AI, unveiling a free guide to promote better representation of women. The campaign extended across 30 countries in Q2 2024, featuring films of varying lengths (120'', 60'', 15''), highlighting the powerful idea embodied in the classical "Pure Imagination" song performed by Victoria Canal, a rising talent and advocate for individuals with disabilities. Social media challenges, print, and outdoor executions complemented the campaign, with geo-targeted displays showcasing different outcomes. Examples included localizations for many countries, such as “imagine a Brazilian woman” versus “imagine a Brazilian woman like Dove's real beauty ad” in Brazil, or even “imagine a nurse” versus “imagine a nurse like Dove's real beauty ad” next to hospitals.

Dove changed AI because it has actively redefined beauty through over 2,800 global campaigns, featuring more than 14,000 diverse real women in 20 years. Since 2004, Dove tripled its turnover to reach €6 billion in 2024 - its largest sales volume increase in ten years. Initiatives like the Dove Self-Esteem Project and the Crown Act have impacted over 100 million girls' lives. The campaign received 94% of positive sentiment and marked the biggest PR coverage of Dove's history. The "Global State of Beauty" research findings, a widely viewed campaign film (over 500 million organic views globally), and "Real Beauty Prompt Guidelines" that attracted over 10,000 downloads in two weeks generated, altogether, over 4 billion organic impressions for the campaign. This comprehensive approach resulted in over 1,000 global press and social media publications, with coverage in major outlets like Fast Company, FOX, Globo, NBC, Forbes, and Elle.